After reading the “NOIRS: The City, the Woman and Other Spaces”, I was amazed on how “Black Rose” uses various film technique to show female gaze especially on the frozen shots and multi view point. Also, the elevator girl uses jump cuts, which shows the rapid movement of a strong female protagonist actions.
It was also quite intriguing that spy thriller genre in HK was heavily influenced by the James Bond series, and how that influenced the characteristics of female spies in HK films.
It was also quite interesting to see how social discontent with the ruling class is reflected to the movie. It was very interesting to see that there are a lot more people go watch films when it is the time with turmoil. These workers are probably young workers with money to spend in theaters. Movies themselves do not actually reflect political issues of the time, but escapism from what they watch. I also noticed that in the two genres – noir film, Melo drama, do not touch on political issues, and they stay in the framework as working classes. this is because people don’t want to be thinking about politics. ‘Mean while English readers of the south east china morning post were frequently informed of the changing faces of a city undergoing development… never before the was the construction of a city so visibly foregrounded in public print media as it was in the sixties’ if you were at that time, and had political unrest. Only escapism was to watch movies.
Ez Kim
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Appreciate your developing interest in this often overlooked historical period and your observation on the types of films that chose to engage with politics of the era varied by genre. I advise that you should clarify that Black Rose and Elevator Girl are both films. How do you feel about political messaging in movies today? Do you think they are still less apparent in the same genres, or has the balance shifted?